Keene - Science in wonderland: the scientific fairy tales of Victorian Britain

Fig. 1. Old and New Toys, Punch (1848). One of several illustrations accompanying a satirical article that compared the traditional toys of the nursery with suggested improvements for Victorian Britain. Alongside other depictions of a megatherium rocking-horse and a hot air balloon kite, it recommended replacing a trumpet and toy sword with a blowpipe and an electrical machine.

The little Gradgrinds had cabinets in various departments of science too. They had a little conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as though they might have been broken from the parent substances by those tremendously hard instruments their own names

This presentation skewered a particular mode of teaching; however, whereas the five Gradgrind children had only grown up with their ological cabinets and fact-filled speeches, for many other children in Victorian Britain such hands-on scientific investigations were practised alongside and as part of other types of activities.

Far from being dusty fact-crammers, Victorian science books and articles, shows and activities, artefacts and pastimes, were explicit attempts to combine education with entertainment; or, in the favoured phrase of the day, instruction and amusement. Analysing these books, objects, and activities elucidates their content and intent and impact; they were evidently much more than Gradgrindian stereotypes. We will discover that fairy tales might have been made to look a lot like science; but also that scienceas Dickenss oriental simile in my opening example reminded uscould look a lot like fairy tales as well.

Many Victorian audiences would have been familiar with Dickenss characterization of attempts to instruct wider publics in scientific subjects. The second quarter of the nineteenth century had been rife with movements toas it was seencompensate for both expert and lay deficiencies in scientific understanding. The so-called gentlemen of science had combated a perceived decline in British capabilities with calls for the reform of university syllabi and the defining of new roles for scientific practitioners, and founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831, whose peripatetic annual meetings would continue throughout the century as a touchstone for current debates, and as fodder for the periodical press.